Culture Slut: Thirty, Flirty and Dying

Make it stand out

Gals, this is it: I’m turning thirty and I have no idea how to feel.  The world is still so changed from Covid that it doesn’t look like how I pictured making this next step in my life, but then again, I don’t look anything like how I imagined thirty would. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Too late for that. When we are young, we have ideas about what we will be like when we get older, how we will live, what we will wear, who we will have in our lives, but it rarely rings true when the time comes.

At 20 I had taken what Hollywood gave me and felt confident that my 30s would be a comfortable existence in penthouse apartments (or at least a two bed flat in Dalston with a balcony and a communal garden) with a high paying fashion magazine job (ha!), gorgeous clothes, a wide circle of glamorous and well connected friends, a handsome and loving fiancée, and, in my softer moments, maybe even a little fluffy cat. I would have brunch with the girls and go to sample sales. I would go on dates to art galleries and talk knowledgeable about the latest Gursky exhibition at the Hayward. I would be inundated with invitations to parties and private views and VIP night club experiences. I would know someone who knew someone who knew Anna Wintour and would privately think about leaving London behind for making a go of it in New York. I would go to concept restaurants and eat Heston Blumenthal style de-constructed steak and frites, garnished with gold leaf and an as yet undiscovered South American herb. I would have birthday cakes made by artisan bakers with candles but no mention of an actual age on it. I would have a skin care routine and sleep in silk sheets in a vast white bed. 

“I was taught that my prince would come, and he would be a lawyer, and I would have his children. And on the weekends we would barbecue. And all the other princes and their princesses would come, and they would say, "Delicious, delicious." Oh, how boring.” - Liquid Sky, 1982

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Now, approaching my actual thirtieth birthday, I can see that none of this is true, or even that desirable to me any more. This vision of thirty was sold to me by things like Sex and The City, which is a TV show I didn’t even watch, or like. My thirty is very different. I live in my parents house and pay their mortgage with the pay check from a boring job that I stay at because I don’t have to think about it when I’m not there. I have a load of unfinished photography and writing projects that I keep soldiering on with purely for my own benefit. I sometimes drink too much and have started having three day hangovers. I have a favourite pizza delivery that I order so often that the drivers have started to recognise my address and have started commenting on what I answer the door to them in. When I'm sad I buy myself Mr Kipling French Fancies because the chemical sweetness makes me feel like a child again.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
But I do also have some of the things I dreamed of. I have a huge amount of friends, friends for every mood, friends in the night clubs, friends in the bars, friends I can visit and stay with, friends I call up and hang out with, friends I can commiserate with, friends I can cry with, friends who will lift me up when I'm at my lowest point. And hey, some of them are even glamorous and well connected, just the other week I was in a group chat getting the behind the scenes pics of the Gemma Collins cover shoot as they happened in real time. I have some of the gorgeous clothes I used to dream about, what started with my teenage passion for charity shops and vintage finds has refined itself into that ageing homosexual tradition of antiquing, and buying higher end trinkets. I definitely still don’t have the money for it, but my impulse control is lower. “Go on,” my inner voice says, “go on and buy it, you deserve it, you are nearly thirty, you deserve beautiful things!” and god-damn-it I do! I have this column, which truly does make me feel like an empowered working-gal-on-the-go with a voice and a purpose. “Oh I can’t see you this evening, I'm writing my column!” “I need to re-watch this old favourite film because I'm writing about it for my column!” “Haha, I know, I'm so witty and funny, I should write that down to use in my column!” Spice me up baby, I have a legitimate paid writing gig where I just get to spew forth. Call me Carrie Bradshaw and bring me Cosmopolitan.

I remember in art school I had an exquisitely beautiful friend who was a few years younger than me, and when he turned nineteen I gave him a birthday card with a passage from Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray in it.

“We have only a few years to really live perfectly, before our youth and beauty leaves us… Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”

I used to worry about my future, how I would feel as my body changed, seeing my face gain texture and wrinkles and white hairs. My hairline has receded, my back aches if I lie down too long, I do not look how I did five years ago. I don’t even look how I did one year ago. I recently got dressed for an on camera interview for a documentary about queer night-life, and I thought I looked fabulous, glamorous and gorgeous, but when it was over and the twenty year old film makers had left my studio, I caught a glimpse of myself in my mirror. I saw an ageing cross dresser in too much face powder with a double chin, and I was horrified. But it’s me. It’s life. For every day that I am going to feel ugly and too old to do what I want to do, there will be at least three more days where I feel powerful and beautiful. Where there are highs there will always be lows, and that’s something that we just have to accept. 

And as I sit here and write, I think about what turning thirty really and truly is. It is a celebration that I made it. That I am here. It doesn't matter that things aren't how I pictured them, it doesn't matter how things are at all, because I am still here. I've been through so much, wonderful highs, dreadful lows, injuries, attacks, therapies, attempts, assaults, so many foul things but I stayed strong and I’ve made it through, to this day which I never thought would come. The day I turn thirty will be the day I can start afresh and set my sights on newer and loftier goals. This will be the day I can stop looking over my should and turn towards the sun. I know who I am, I know who I’ve been, and I'm open to who I am yet to be. The societal expectations of thirty mean nothing anymore because, as we are constantly told, we live in unprecedented times. The Nuclear family is over, the world is on fire, no one knows what tomorrow will bring! The only thing we have left for certain is ourselves, and I intend to love and celebrate every part of the self that has served me so well for so many years.

I didn’t know how thirty was going to feel, but now I do. Thirty is going to be the next step in my journey of self love and self acceptance, thirty will an age where I continue to honour myself and my body and everything I have been through. I don’t know what’s coming next but I can tell you one thing, I will be thirty, flirty and THRIVING.

Words and Images: Misha MN